I’m curious if anyone else has played this game. It was on my wishlist forever, has stellar reviews, and I ended up DNFing it. I just found it deeply unfun but can’t shake the feeling I’m like, missing something.
I like soulslikes. I like grindy RPGs, stupid levels of difficulty, and big boss battles, so it’s a good combo for me. Like Monster Hunter (<333) with higher stakes. What I don’t like is how they’re all grimdark psyhorror, so the idea of a brightly colored sea-themed soulslike is something I was very excited about. I ended up quitting at the third boss.
It was death by a thousand cuts with this game. Just a list:
1. Whyyy can English-language voice actors not take their jobs in games seriously. How am I supposed to get invested in this weirdly serious story about the destruction of ocean life when everyone sounds like a doofy Saturday-morning cartoon? “This is all worthless… this will never mean anything!” screams the duchess in the voice of Telly Monster. It’s hard to attribute this to bad direction when it’s such a pervasive problem, even in AAA games. Anime has this issue too, where even very dark and serious shows are localized as though they’re Blues Clues; I fundamentally think (in both cases) it’s a lack of respect for the form. I find it pretty frustrating at a time with games like Hades and Clair Obscur, where the sound design is so part of the artistic experience, that people are still out here screaming serious plot information with the same tone they’d shout THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP.
2. I really struggled with the hitboxes in this game, which obviously made the bossfights a nightmare. I’m not sure what was going on here, since this is a problem I’ve never had before. Everyone’s hit boxes felt enormous in both directions — I could not figure out the range of my own weapon, or the range of enemies. Part of me wonders if this is because everyone is a crustacean, where even in games like Monster Hunter where I’m fighting giant dragons and shit my avatar is humanoid? But if that was the case it doesn’t explain why I didn’t get used to it over time.
3. Boss attacks were telegraphed really, really poorly. There were almost no patterns — the attack would just happen. This made planning and strategizing almost impossible — it was just kiting and strafing, which isn’t what makes these games fun to me. Like, this is a bit of a digression, but one of my favorite parts of Monster Hunter is doing a new hunt for the first time and getting absolutely slaughtered, and then you come back after having done it a few times and can just destroy it because you have its behavior memorized. That arc of slowly learning is so satisfying, possibly my favorite thing about boss-heavy games, and it just did not happen with these bosses. The worst part was that the bosses have “unmissable” attacks which you get notified of with a flashing !! about a milisecond before they hit you, far too late to plan for. Also, despite the game calling them unmissable, you can actually dodge them, which ????. But really, as far as I can tell, you just have to be far enough away so that when the attack starts you can get away in time, which again, that strafing thing isn’t really fun to me.
4. Relatedly, I found the delay on roll/dodge to be really weird and unintuitive. I was routinely hitting the dodge button in time, but the dodge animation or something was just way longer than I could get used to. I’m again not sure what to attribute this to — it may be as simple as I’m used to an instant response and that isn’t how this was calibrated, and I just wasn’t able to modify my existing mental blueprint for this type of game. I’m not sure if this is an issues of design or play. I’ve just never played a boss rush game and had so many issues timing my dodges, and it didn’t get better over time.
5. Minor, but boss intro cutscenes don’t skip after your first try. This got infuriating very quickly, especially on the very first boss, where each time you died you had to run across a huge expanse, hit a button, see a short cutscene, pick up an item, see another cutscene, and then wait until the boss charged across the screen into the arena. This is bad, bad design, full stop.
6. The biggest problem, though, was the camera. It was constantly clipping into things. I feel like this shouldn’t need to be said, but the reason souls bosses all happen in huge cavernous room and flat circles is that the camera needs to be unobstructed at all times. I constantly got hit and killed because I would swing the camera around and just not be able to see — there was so much meaningless scenery jutting into boss arenas at all times. I got the sense that the expectation was you were going to have autotarget on at all times, but a) I never use autotarget, I hate it and b) why have a free camera at all then? The camera was also an issue with the platforming and grappling.
All this combined meant that the game just… wasn’t fun. I even thought, “Maybe this is too hard for me? Am I old and my skills are slipping?” So I turned the difficultly down, which made it easier, but not more enjoyable. The combat was both boring and frustrating even when I was blowing through enemies.
What finally made me quit was when I was about to beat a major boss, and made a break for what I thought was a gap between a scenery piece and the boundary of the arena. I swung the camera around to follow the boss, only to find it clipping into the wall. When I finally righted the camera I realized I had become stuck in the scenery and couldn’t move, attack, or jump. I stood there while the boss, who had only two or three hits left, just wailed on me til I died. At that stage I thought, “I have like 100 unplayed games right now and I’ll presumably enjoy some of them, so why am I wasting time with this one making me miserable?” and I uninstalled it.
It’s a shame because the platforming sections were pretty fun. The camera was still not great, but the scenery and setting really carried it, and I liked exploring the environments. I wish this had just been a game like Mario 64, where the focus was on the platforming and the bosses were fewer and further between and more about execution. Even a Zelda-ish setup would have been really great. It’s a shame; I wanted to like it so badly.
…this studio also made Going Under, which had similar “fun” issues and which I also DNFed. It was a cleverly plotted and brightly colored roguelike, but the dungeons were samey and had to be repeated so many times to clear them, so by the time I got to the fifth one, which I assumed was the last, I was very glad it was over. But it wasn’t over! There’s actually 9 dungeons oh wait no, there’s not, because it turns out the second half of the game is just re-clearing the same four dungeons in their entirety again, plus one more endgame dungeon and I was just like absolutely the fuck not. It’s hard to imagine something that could have felt more disrespectful of my time.
So I think the core issue may just be that this dev team and I have very different ideas about what makes games worth putting time into. For my money, I should be getting out more than I’m putting into it. Their idea seems to be more about games monopolizing your time and sucking you dry.
Still, I’m curious if anyone else has played this. I still feel like I was doing it wrong or missed something.
…also, is it just me, or was the whole “umami” thing weirdly racist…?
That’s a shame, I was looking forward to this one for the same reasons.
I’d be SO curious to hear what you think of it. I still have the feeling that I maybe just didn’t “get” it. It has such incredible reviews!
I’ve now played the game up to the… fifth major boss, I think? (The samurai in the Expired Grove.) I’ve been enjoying it — more than I enjoyed Dark Souls — and I think I might have the answers to some of your problems.
1. Yeah, this is a fair point. I like some of the voice acting (Kril in particular sounds like an overwhelmed kid, which is adorable), but the villains do tend to ham it up to a ridiculous degree. Nephro immediately made me think “You’re laying it on a bit too thick, bro.” (The fish-based slang and substitutes for swear words were also pretty cringey, I always find that incredibly corny.) I thought Magista’s breakdown was okay though? The overlay effect for the corrupted dialogue worked to convey the seriousness, I thought. I haven’t advanced the plot very much, though, so maybe later scenes are worse.
2. This wasn’t a problem for me. I sometimes underestimate the range of the charge attack (depth perception in video games is always a nightmare), but even that I mostly have the hang of by now. Enemy hitboxes were never a problem for me, but then I never had much issue with Dark Souls hitboxes either despite everyone and their dog railing against them.
3. This wasn’t a problem for me either, aside from a few like Pagurus’ rapid shell-snatch attack. The pace of combat is definitely a lot faster than in Dark Souls, and it took me a little bit to adjust, but I found attacks were telegraphed reasonably well most of the time, especially the crush and grab attacks, which almost always have extremely long windups.
4. I genuinely don’t know what you’re talking about here, I never noticed any delay on the dodge. You might be frustrated because the dodge is way weaker than in Dark Souls; it’s closer to the dodge of Bloodborne or Sekiro with how short it is, so it’s not effective at dodging all attacks. I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to favor blocking over dodging; this protects you from the rapid attacks, too.
5. You can skip cutscenes by pressing the start button.
6. I genuinely don’t know what you’re talking about here. All the bosses I’ve seen so far are fought in massive open spaces, and in fact the environments are way more open than in Dark Souls. I did have a few instances of the camera getting pressed against the wall, which was annoying, but it happens way less often than in Dark Souls. (As an aside, I’m genuinely baffled how you were able to make any progress without autotarget.)
Now, the clipping into walls, that is a major problem, and definitely my biggest complaint with the game so far. I’ve lost count of the number of times I got wedged between objects with no recourse but the menu suicide failsafe. It’s also frustratingly unclear which objects are considered slopes — I spent ages trying to do one of the jumps in the Expired Grove only to realize that a perfectly flat outcrop was inexplicably considered a slope, so I couldn’t jump off of it. Then in attempting to get around it, I jumped on what looked like a climbable surface only to discover it was a slope that pushed me into a bed of sea urchins that stunlocked me to death with no recourse. The sheer number of these collision issues are really inexcusable and by far the worst part of the game for me. (I have to wonder if it’s because the shell mechanics give you a variable hitbox, making it nigh-impossible to test every size in every gap?)
If you’re having a hard time, try buying the matryoshka shell from Shellfish Desires. Combined with the skill that lets you repair your shell with counterattacks, it makes you basically invincible. The samurai killed me so many times when I was trying to parry him and fight him normally, but when I just hid in my matryoshka and tanked all his attacks I beat him first try with little effort.
Some of this makes me wonder if I was having controller issues. I was playing on deck, maybe that was causing issues without me realizing? I play everything on deck nowadays so I’m not sure I’d even have a point of reference for something being off.
Or maybe I just didn’t ‘click’ with it, it happens, but I feel like there’s a lurking variable.
Maybe? I’ve never tried Steam Deck, so I don’t know what the controls are like. I use a USB controller plugged into a desktop.
Monster Hunter mentioned! I loved World and Wilds, though it took Wilds a few patches to have content worth grinding. One of the interesting things about that is like, I’m a latecomer to the series, so I only picked up World once it had a DLC and several years of free bonus content. When I picked up Wilds on release, I was somewhat dismayed at how little there was for a $70. I’m reconciled to that now that the free content patches are coming in, though.
Wilds is probably now one of my favorite action games, one of the best (though in different ways) since Sekiro. You can tell that the Souls games were inspired by Monster Hunter, but man, in hindsight MonHun really makes From look bad at designing anything bigger than a human.
MH is one of my favorite series I’ve all time, I’ve been with it since… Tri, I think? It’s the biggest part of my merch collection aside from Pokemon, lol. I’ve actually stubbornly and unreasonably refused to play World and Wilds because of the changes they made for Western audiences, esp since part of what I love is the goofy parody of the mainline games and I can’t get used to the whole grimdark thing. Definitely check out the mainline games, if you haven’t played Rise you 100% should, it’s amazing. Though the QOL improvements in Rise have def made it hard to go back to the older games, Gen U/Dub Cross is still really solid too. And the swimming battles of 3U are really unique and weird, wish they’d go back to that someday.
The content method with MH has always been “release solid but small main campaign” then “spend years releasing free DLC.” I’ve been worried they were going to change this and make the title updates and sidequests paid, especially with Wilds, but they don’t seem to be planning to, at least not yet, which is pretty cool.
The creativity and uniqueness of the MH design is always amazing to me, that even after all these years they’re still finding ways to make the monsters feel and look unique is really impressive. I’m always sad when one-offs get left behind from gen to gen, I need more malfestio and qurupeco content. It’s one of the reasons Gen/Cross was so fun. I’m glad Glavenus showed up in Iceborne, hopefully that means it’ll keep popping up and not be a one-off. Oh and they put the mizu and lagiacrus in Wilds! That’s good everyone deserves the mizu and lagi is best monster.
I just realized you’ve never experienced the Khezu omg. Them putting the Khezu in every game and then getting to World and going “westerners can’t handle this” will never not be hilarious to me.
sorry i just want to talk about my favorite monsters
Well, I hate to out myself as Western Audience, but I definitely love World and Wilds so I’m not sure I could go back to the older games if they’re missing something from the newer games.
I don’t know just how lighthearted the tone is for the older games, but World and Wilds do not really feel grimdark, like, at all. There’s cooking cats (sadly demoted to doordash cats in Wilds) and silly, quirky characters. Even the parts that might charitably be called ‘heavy’ are just like… people disagreeing on how best to preserve the environment, or whether a given monster really should actually be slain outright. Beyond that it’s just the general tension of any action game.
From what I can see in Wilds, they’re saving the nickel-and-dime microtransaction stuff for character skins and other cosmetics that I simply do not care about, so I’m totally fine with them doing that as long as the new mons and higher rank hunts are free. It seems like they’re specifically bringing some old one-offs back, like Lagiacrus with the underwater battle portion. I love all of the high-rank monsters added so far: Mizu with its unique agility and double threat elemental damage, Gore Magala (the strongest dragon in the game so far imo), and Seregios who never stops fucking attacking. Also the aforementioned Lagia.
Last but not least is the Final Fantasy XIV collab, which added a raid superboss named Omega Planetes. That thing really plays for keeps. I’ve only beaten its tempered (Savage to use FFXIV parlance) form with other players once, because by the nature of the faint/cart system, every single person has to avoid dying and there’s no room for deadweight.
Ooh, was gore magala not in world? It’s one of my all time favorites, it’s so insanely cool looking and it’s mechanics are so unique. Is brachydios in those games? Mizu, lagi, gore, and brachy are probs my top four.
Rise is totally worth playing, imo it’s the best game in the series. They took all the things they learned from world and really streamlined the whole experience, plus the elder dragons are super unique. Not sure how it compares with wilds since I’m less familiar with wilds gameplay than I am with world, but you should definitely check it out if you like world since imo it’s an improvement on both sides of the series.
But yeah you can’t really go backwards from Rise, the qol changes for the switch era were just too big.
Gore Magala might have been in World, but I didn’t exhaustively play it. I beat the story and a bunch of the extra stuff, but I’ll hand it to World: it had A LOT of content.
Wilds from what I understand is a lot like Rise, but it added a few weapon mechanics that are straight dopamine, like the Offset. The Rising Slash from a greatsword/switchaxe, and any Upswing attack from the hammer (there are four) now Offset monster attacks, negating your damage and even knocking the monster over sometimes. Longsword is still Capcom’s favorite son, but Sword and Shield and the lances and such also really kick ass. The weapons feel just unbelievably good. I heard from a friend that a few of Rise’s moves, like Sacred Sheathe on the Longsword, are gone, but that the overall gameplay feels just as good if not better.
Gore Magala is funny because in theory it’s meant to have high damage and mobility, but be fairly fragile to give you a fighting chance. 9-Star tempered Gore is just as beefy as any other tempered monster though, so all you’re left with is a total demon.
Oh yeah, in a series first, Wilds gives you a second weapon in a saddlebag on your mount. The mounts, Seikret, are so so good, I could never go back after having them. They’re big ol’ birds that can run up walls and glide and just do tons of other good stuff, like scoop you up off the ground before you’d normally be able to get up. You can use items on them and sharpen your weapon and so on.
Yeah, having a mount was such a good move; I’m not surprised they brought it into Wilds from Rise and really hope the carry palamutes forward.
The second weapon thing is interesting — it makes things like the hunting horn much more viable in one or two-player local because then you could swap, and makes it easier to get drops that require certain damage types. Plus, it’s a material sink. I’m really curious if they’ll bring it into the next mainline game. I’d love to run my usual dual blades aloneside a hunting horn or bowgun in a way that doesn’t require constant swapping and losing track.
From makes From look bad at designing anything bigger than a human too
So I just finished this and liked it a lot! I felt there were some balance issues (Mantis Punch and Bobbit Trap were so OP I rarely bothered with any other adaptations), but overall it felt a lot more fun than Dark Souls did. The combat just felt a lot easier and more forgiving overall while still being challenging; I frequently beat minibosses on my first try, and even the most difficult bosses never stonewalled me for long. (If anything, I actually thought the final boss was a bit too easy.)
The story also managed to be really engaging and well-done, despite some of the writing and voice acting issues you and I pointed out. I adore the trope of animals repurposing human tools in bizarre ways, and the game got a ton of mileage out of that. Farla (who’s way more into ecology than me) said that the designs demonstrate a really strong knowledge of marine biology, and I was impressed by how many weird animals I ran into. (I also really liked the final boss and how it played out — I’m a sucker for that trope.) In some ways, the story was darker than Dark Souls because it was about a real issue, and the fact the world isn’t a doomed craphole filled with one-note sadsacks gave it actual stakes. I appreciated just how scathing the anti-capitalism turned out to be and Kril’s totally justified anger at everything.
My only big criticism, other than the platforming and clipping issues, is that I think the shell insurance mechanic might have been a bad idea, at least the particular way it was done. It’s convenient, but a bit too convenient; I just stuck with the best shells the whole game and rarely experimented. As a result, I didn’t use many shell spells, so I felt like I never seriously engaged with a major mechanic.
Glad to hear it! I’m going to give it another shot with a controller once I’m feeling better. I really loved its whole vibe so I’m hoping I just was having issues and I can get into it with another go.